Katie Chang, intern at Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society, summarized (scroll down to the News section to see “Sifry’s Blogosphere Report”) Berkman Fellow David Weinberger’s observations on the State of the Blogosphere report by Technorati founder and director David Sifry.
Sifry pointed out in his report that MSM sites like the New York Times and CNN still dominate online news but that certain blogs are increasingly influential. Sifry brought attention to “The Magic Middle” — about 155,000 blogs that have accrued between 20 and 1,000 inbound links. These are often niche sites “that are interesting, topical, and influential, and in some cases are radically changing the economics of trade publishing.”
Berkman Fellow David Weinberger, interpreted Sifry’s data about the MSM’s dominance this way: “As more people blog, the sites that we all read in common remain the MSM. … But as blogging spreads, interests get more diverse, so there are fewer blogs that we all read. … Does this mean the mainstream media are “winning”? Nah, it just means that they remain the main stream. We don’t yet know if they are a habit we’re going to overcome, an institution waiting to be Wikipedia-ed, or if they will transform themselves enough to continue being our common ground.”